zephyrbc

Day 1 - 10 September 2011 Getting from our hotel in Beijing to our hotel in Shanghai was very easy. We caught the subway in Beijing to Beijing South Railway station, jumped on the super express brand new train, hopped off 1300km and 5hrs later, caught the subway to the People’s Square and emerged out into hot and humid central Shanghai. Our hotel in Shanghai was absolutely fantastic, it was centrally located on one of Shanghai’s best food streets, Yunnan Road, which is a 2 minute walk from Huai Hai Road, the People’s Square and Nanjing Road and a 10 minute walk from the Bund. After washing off the litres of sweat which had poured out of our bodies during the 5 minute walk from the train to the hotel, we set off to Nanjing ... read more

For our final day ‘in Beijing’ we headed off with a van load of other tourists (mostly Colombian for some reason) to the Great Wall at Mutianyu. Once we got about an hour out of the city we began to catch glimpses of the wall snaking its way along the tops of the mountains in the distance. At first it looks like a road or as if your eyes are playing tricks on you, but as you get closer to the mountains there is no mistaking that it is the wall. Mutianyu is slightly further from Beijing than Badaling, the more popular section of the wall, and as a result we pretty much had the place to ourselves when we first arrived. We caught the cable car up to the wall, climbed up some stairs and ... read more

The following day we had a slightly more leisurely start before heading back to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City – this time with our passports! As we came out of the subway we realised that forgetting our passports the first day had been a blessing in disguise, the scaffold from the front gate of the Forbidden City had been removed following the application of a fresh coat of paint and the light rain the previous night seemed to have cleared away a lot of the haze so we had a much clearer view of the sites. We checked in our bags and then joined the line to see Mao. The line moved very quickly and after only about 10 minutes we were inside the main hall filing past Mao / wax model who had been ... read more

We awoke on the second morning in Beijing feeling slightly worse for wear. The lonely planet had mentioned a few places you could get a foot massage for when the uneven Beijing concrete footpaths take a toll on your body. We both dismissed this comment initially, but we now realised we probably should have found a hotel located right next door to one of them! At least we weren’t the only travellers to have woken up feeling like this! We usually walk a lot overseas, and neither of us had ever ended up with sore legs, knees, ankles and feet like this – ouch. We decided on a nice gentle activity for our day considering we were both in pain… the Summer Palace. The Palace is well connected by the subway, so we set off walking ... read more

After an overnight stop in Kuala Lumpur, during which we caught up with our friends Mira and Khalid for dinner and managed to get about 4hrs sleep, we boarded the plane for Tianjin, near Beijing in China. I got through immigration without any issues, but the guards seemed a little more interested in Scott…possibly because of there is an international arrest warrant out for him but more likely because of the period of time he spent living in Shanghai. After a number of people examined his passport and typed things on the computer he was allowed into China. Tianjin is connected to Beijing by a high speed railway, and somehow we fluked our way through purchasing tickets for the train and then onto the bus to the train station and finally onto our very comfortable train. ... read more

During one of our strenuous days in Ella the idea of an overnight stop in Yala National Park came up. The five of us (Sarah, Roly, Emma, Scott and I) decided to hire a car to drop us in Tissa so that we could do a morning safari the following day before going our separate ways. The drive form Ella to Tissa was, in typical Sri Lankan style, absolutely gorgeous; rolling hills, deep valleys, jungle, waterfalls and rice paddies. On arrival in Tissa we checked into the hotel and began the hard task of bargaining about the price of a 5am - 12pm safari in Yala National Park with the hotel owner. His initial price was about 4500rupees per person; far higher than the price that was suggested in Lonely Planet. Throughout the bargaining process we ... read more

We decided to do the approximately 200km round trip to Sigiriya and Dambulla as a day trip from Kandy…in a tuk-tuk. The three hour drive to Dambulla was actually quite enjoyable, there is a certain charm about driving through the countryside in a tuk tuk, somehow you seem closer to the people in the town and the scenery than you do in a car. As with the drive to Kandy the scenery was absolutely gorgeous, a combination of rice paddies, rolling hills, tea plantations and jungle broken up by busy towns. Dambulla is about 10km’s closer to Kandy than Sigiriya, and is home to the Royal Rock Temples - basically a bunch of Buddhas in caves. The caves are about 150m above the town, which means you have to climb up stairs to reach them (what ... read more